Hiring the Best Knowledge Workers, Techies & Nerds

Hiring the Best Knowledge Workers, Techies & Nerds: The Secrets and Science of Hiring Technical People

Good technical people are the foundation on which successful high technology organizations are built. Establishing a good process for hiring such workers is essential. Unfortunately, the generic methods so often used for hiring skill-based staff, who can apply standardized methods to almost any situation, are of little use to those charged with the task of hiring technical people.

Unlike skill-based workers, technical people typically do not have access to cookie-cutter solutions to their problems. They need to adapt to any situation that arises, using their knowledge in new and creative ways to solve the problem at hand. As a result, one developer, tester, or technical manager is not interchangeable with another. This makes hiring technical people one of the most critical and difficult processes a technical manager can undertake.

An effective hiring process is crucial to saving an organization the costs and consequences of a bad hiring decision. Not only is a bad hire costly in terms of recruiting expenses and the time spent hiring, it can also bog down or derail projects that may already be running late.

You, your team, and your organization will live with the long-term consequences of your hiring decision. Investing time in developing a hiring strategy will shorten your decision time and the ramp-up time needed for each new hire—reducing the impact of hiring on your project progress.

Do you want an updated hiring book that addresses what a hiring manager needs to know now, not a decade ago? In that case, see Hiring Geeks That Fit. I removed about 20,000 words, so you can read it faster. It talks about how you hire in this age of social networks and social media. It has a ton of information about how you hire for cultural fit. It’s better than this book.

You can buy Hiring the Best Knowledge Workers… book from the publisher, Dorset House. You can also buy it from Amazon.